Now, after spending a few days completing it, it's time for the final review. Beware of spoilers!
Did you like that introduction? I'm actually quite proud of it, to be honest. I was actually inspired to write it like a television show recap after watching Riverdale last week where they begin the show with that. I think I'm going to start all of my posts like that now.
I bet you're wondering whose route I got on next, right? I didn't really plan out a route order beforehand, I just went straight back to the common route (which literally took two minutes to clear by skipping), made a few random choices and ended up on Astrum's route. I was actually quite excited, because from what I saw of him at the end of the last one, he seemed quite interesting. Last time I played the game told me when I had managed to secure a place on someone's route, but it didn't here for some reason. Maybe I just missed the text in the screen notifying me of it.
The choice I made this time was not to make Kazuha run away from Hiroya when he tells her to. Instead I think she uses her harp powers to slow down the enemy or something, if I remember correctly. Then I think Astrum comes in and helps them defeat whatever monster it was they were fighting. Astrum realises that Kazuha is the Almighty Amadeus and offers to bring them to his base for protection and so they can clear the Ark or whatever. Hiroya was a bit skeptical but they still ended up going off with Astrum anyway.
Astrum is an interesting character. He's the leader of one of the main angel guilds, and does some really serious role-playing to make him fit the role. Even though his followers think that his RPing is a bit cheesy, they still seem to have a lot of respect for him, until Kazuha comes in. He treats her like a little princess, calling her "Amadeus" all the time and catering to every one of her needs because she's such an important part to escaping World V. All of the other angels (who all have names like "Flustered Angel" and no sprites) think that she's a fake and that Astrum's a bit stupid for bringing her and Hiroya into their massive palace base thing. They're probably right for thinking that because Kazuha's just this level one nobody who literally can't do anything right now, but Astrum tells them to all shut up anyways.
I don't normally like the flirty, heroic good guy love interests, but I actually quite like Astrum. For some reason he reminded me of Zen from Mystic Messenger just a little bit. He kept trying to get close to Kazuha a lot in the beginning, which made me feel a bit sorry for Hiroya because it was making him get really pissed off and jealous.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡ °)
For some reason Astrum decided to watch Kazuha sleep. When I watched Twilight and Edward did the same thing to Bella I was really weirded out, but for some reason I didn't mind it here. Maybe it's because it wasn't as creepy as it was in that film! Fun fact: I'm pretty sure that Astrum's seiyuu does the Japanese dub for Edward Cullen. I didn't actually realise that until hours after making this post so I just had to add it in!
(PLEASE NOTE: I HAVE NO IDEA WHY THE ABOVE TEXT IS ALL WHITE HIGHLIGHTED, AND FOR SOME REASON NO MATTER WHAT I DO, IT WON'T GO AWAY. SORRY ABOUT THAT, PLEASE DRAG YOUR MOUSE CURSOR OVER IT IF YOU WANT TO READ IT.)
Kazuha keeps hearing all the others calling her weak behind her back, so she feels determined to start levelling up by doing quests and stuff. But in the entire route she only manages to get up to level five, she should've gotten way higher up than that, because if my Pokemon training knowledge is correct, the first few levels up until about fifteen would really easy to get through if she did the kind of quests that she did! But then again, this isn't Pokemon, it's a fictional MMO.
Anyways, Astrum, Kazuha and a lot of other people go on this random quest to get EXP points. Astrum puts this magic chain on our heroine than reroutes all of her damage so that it goes to him instead. The quest takes them back to the real world once they complete it. Waking up back in Shiki's room, Kazuha decides to look for him by going over to his college. It's there that she bumps in to an adorable little megane boy who basically has the same personality as me IRL. I knew before playing that this was Astrum's real personality. He gets made fun of by his classmates and constantly feels inferior to his classmate Shiki because he is the only one who gets better grades than him. Astrum's real name is Toru, which I had to look up because I had forgotten it, all I remembered was that it started with a T and an O.
Kazuha witnesses the real Toru, who is not as well-respected and confident as his Arcadia counterpart. This embarrasses Toru and causes him to get a bit angry at our MC, so he basically tells her to bugger off. Then she goes back home and gets whooshed back into World V again!
These douchey angel players try to force her to go to the Ark with them immediately upon returning. Kazuha panics because she doesn't want to go, but then Demento pops up and technically saves her by killing all her assailants. But Kazuha goes out of the frying pan and into the fire as Demento just drags her into the Ark anyway and treats her like dirt. I actually managed to get some affection points for him here, I was planning to go back to see if the other choice gave me points for Astrum but then I didn't bother.
Demento and our poor heroine get involved in a difficult monster battle. Unfortunately the magic chain on Kazuha never got taken off, so all of the damage is going to Astrum instead, but it didn't hurt him too much because he managed to come all the way over from his (now destroyed by the Jaws of Death) home base to rescue his damsel in distress.
It turns out that Demento used to be Astrum's gaming partner until he killed a player and found out that it was actually quite fun. Then he became a "fallen" as was only allowed to use one skill and wasn't allowed any special perks or nothing.
Kazuha and Astrum defeat the edgy shirtless fallen angel boy and manage to escape into the forest. Astrum is still quite pissed off with our MC and speaks to her like his IRL self does, all awkward and flustered. Luckily they make up and then run into Poyo-Poyo who tells them that all of their friends/guild members are in the nearby town. Hiroya's there too so I suppose that's quite good.
Then everybody nearby (including the demon guild Forte from Radius' route who I never really talked about because I couldn't care less about them) joins together to go into the Ark and stop the Period Cube (which Kazuha told Astrum about in the forest but I forgot to mention it). Nobody really believes Astrum about the Cube but after he bows down and begs for them to listen, they're 100% convinced. Also, Radius happens to be there which felt a bit awkward for me because I was only just in his route a few days ago.
First they do a smaller quest which sends everybody back to the real world. Toru and Kazuha meet up at the college to plan out how they're gonna kill the Cube or something, I can't remember exactly. They go into the building and find the office where Shiki's lying there, unconscious. Whenever they say Shiki's full name I chuckle because they use the surname I chose for my MC (which happens to be my real last name) and it sounds really out of place and funny next to a Japanese name.
Toru breaks into the computer and hacks the code for World V. Instead of just hacking it to make the Period Cube go away and to send everybody back to the real world, he decides to send everybody back to the game to do it whilst he sits there IRL and provides vocal support. He gives his magic sword over to his mate Sirent so that the power of it can still be used.
So everybody (except Astrum, of course) gets whooshed back into Arcadia. They head back to the Ark and I think Demento and acts like a nuisance again. They defeat him somehow (I can't remember, it wasn't that important) and come across the Period Cube in this massive room. Then Zain, like he did in Radius' route, reveals himself as Shiki and is like "Oh no, not today losers!!". He attempts to stop them but then the virtual ghost of his friend Natsu pops up and fights him off whilst Kazuha is told to press the magic button that conveniently turns the Period Cube off.
Then everybody's sent back to the real world, and like the last route, Shiki wakes up with absolutely no memory of anything, the little bastard. Of course that means that nobody's going to punish him. Is he going to get away with things in every single route? To be honest, I don't think the authorities are even told about World V anyway, I think they just think it's that weird coma illness again instead and shrug it all off, even though hundreds of people with important lives around the country all fell into comas at the same time. For some reason that doesn't sound suspicious to anybody at all!
Toru and Kazuha become boyfriend and girlfriend, and they all live happily ever after.
It looks like I've gotten into writing full route summaries now, hasn't it? I quite enjoyed this route, but I dunno if it's better than Radius' or not. I don't really know which one is the better love interest, either. There weren't really many new important plot details I found out here except for Demento's backstory (which probably doesn't really matter anyways) and that that glitchy dark haired boy who told Kazuha about the Period Cube is Shiki's dead friend Natsu.
I liked that Astrum had a completely different personality in real life to how he was in the game. I have no idea how Toru managed to throw his shyness away whenever he was in Arcadia, because I'm socially awkward IRL and that usually ends up carrying over to the Internet too, except in my blog and website writing. There was a lot less of the real world here than in Radius' route, which is a shame because for some reason I like it when they get zapped out of the game and have to meet up IRL.
The CGs were alright here, I suppose. At least Kazuha looked better in them here than she did in the ones in Radius' route. This might be one of the only games I've played where the characters actually look better as sprites than they do in the CGs. The artwork they use for the CGs sort of reminds me of children's picture books at times, I don't know why. I think they all looked their best when the scene was in the real world, whereas the sprite designed looked cooler when they were in Arcadia. I love the flapping wing animations with the swaying hair and blinking eyelids.
After playing this route, I went back to the common path and made a few more random choices. Then the story branched and I could either make choices for Hiroya or Libera. I chose Libera because I have no interest in them so I might as well get their route over with. To be quite honest with you, I have no idea what gender they're supposed to be. When I first saw Libera the voices were turned off, so I thought they were a girl because of their appearance and because everybody called them a "she". But then I heard their voice and it sounded like a male voice actor, so now I'm not sure. I don't know if it's a female friendship route or just a trap. It could just be a lesbian route, but I really doubt it because I dunno if Japanese otome games are that progressive yet.
But I'll probably find out later on once I get into the meat of the route. Until then, I have nothing else to write. It feels like I didn't write my opinions much here and instead just recapped the plot. :(
I just said that I had nothing else to write, so why am I typing more?! I should really go now. See you all later.
Next time on Misty's Blog: Like it says literally right above this sentence, I'm playing Libera's route next. That means that I'm obviously going to be writing a review on it. Stay tuned until the next Period Cube based post comes out!
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